When I was 11, my family moved to Watertown, Mass. and I discovered Boston, under the guidance of the Ryan brothers, Kenny and Kevin. Five cents each got us downtown on the subway. The trip home was free: Simply dash down the up escalator — more of a challenge, of course, when unsuspecting adults were riding up.

Downtown Boston got us the Boston Common, the Statehouse and the first-run, double-feature movie palaces left over from the 20s and 30s. Best of all was the Combat Zone. We didn't care about the strip clubs and their sun-bleached photos of faded strippers. The attraction was the five-cent hot dogs, 10-cent hamburgers and the cheap second, third or fourth run double features. The cheapest of all was the Stuart Theatre, two 50s horror movies in a haze of alcohol respiration and the stench of a 25-cent popcorn machine that had probably been last filled when Lon Chaney, Senior, debuted on the screen. You didn't breathe deeply in the Stuart and you didn't eat the popcorn, even on a dare. "Theatre" couldn't have been a vain attempt at class. More likely, the owner couldn't spell.

If you had time, most theaters were free — a public service. Just wait by a side door until the film on screen lets out. One even had an exit you could pry open during the movie. If you didn't mind watching the end of one film, then the second feature and finally the beginning of the first. We didn't mind. Drive-ins were also free. Just a bus, a subway train and another bus (with transfers), then scale the fence — possibly ripping your jeans — and grab a speaker. No seats, so we seldom paid much attention to the films. Who cared? It was free!

And it wasn't all low-brow with us. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts had a first-rate exploration, amazing ancient Egyptian stuff, even mummies. Until I discovered females, nothing was as exciting as a dead, 3,000-year-old pharaoh.

Once, sliding down the museum's marble floors in my socks, I nearly knocked a Rembrandt off its easel. We were outraged that some Bozo had positioned such a priceless painting where anyone sliding by was almost forced to crash into it.

The ultimate in beauty was, of course, Fenway Park. 75 cents got you the bleachers. If you could scrape up $2 — or if your mom got a free ticket for buying enough groceries — you got a reserved seat and eventually you could sneak down to the boxes by the Sox dugout. In ninth grade, I was lucky enough to have a kidney removed. I missed so much school that by April, I was told I could either bust my butt catching up or simply repeat the year. Easy choice. Weekday ballgames, nobody cared where I sat. And batting practice foul balls were easy pickings. I only wished I had a removable kidney for the next season.

Almost as good as Fenway, was a great old YMCA, with an elevated wooden running track, multiple basketball courts and a huge swimming pool. Eventually, it registered that they were the only white kids we'd ever seen in the place. Which made me realize that there were no black people — as in none, not a single one — back in Watertown. Not in the whole town.

A few years later, when I arrived at Notre Dame, there was one black student there. As far as I could tell, just one, Alan Page. Alan was so athletic that he's now in the NFL Hall of Fame. He was so intelligent that he later became a justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court. And he was always so civic-minded that the NFL's community service award is named after him. I can't speak for the other white students back then, but I got accepted without anywhere near that level of potential.

To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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